Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a practice being talked about a lot these days. And like anything that becomes popularized, there is a risk that people can be exposed to a lot of half-truths and mistaken ideas about something that has real opportunity and value.

Mindfulness is fundamentally a posture of the mind, an ongoing choice to pay attention to the here and now. Sometimes this sounds weird and/or vaguely religious to people...and it can be those things, but it can also be a very practical, concrete way of approaching your daily life. It can involve meditation as way of practicing mindfulness, but it doesn't have to, and it doesn't require you to adopt a particular religious philosophy or practice. There are lots of postures of the mind and heart like empathy, compassion, or generosity that don't belong to any particular tradition or belief system although they may have played a significant role in the expressions and practices of a religion. Similarly, mindfulness - paying attention to the present and bringing a contemplative, non-judgemental approach to one's inner experiences - cannot be located in a particular faith or religion. While contemplation has found rich expressions in several of faith and wisdom traditions it can be easily practiced outside of them as well.

Neuroscientists have confirmed an ancient truth, that when we practice paying attention to something, there are corresponding physiological changes in our brains that allow us to focus our attention on that thing more readily in the future. Many of us spend our lives preoccupied with the past, or the future, but rarely paying attention to what is happening right now, especially right now in the inner-world of our minds. In doing so, we fail to be aware of what's really going on, and get stuck in our problems. Mindfulness allows us to begin paying attention to our inner worlds and develop new capacities to first be aware, and then work with, our thoughts, feelings, reactions, and internal processes.

​We'd be happy to discuss more about how mindfulness informed psychotherapy might be useful in your situation, and develop a set of practices that you're comfortable with that can begin to help you transform your functioning in the midst of your problems. ​Below are three areas of focus you can learn more about that we've found particularly helpful in our practice.